


part of the machine

by pendules



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Hackers, Alternate Universe - Non-Magical, Dissociation, Drug Use, Gun Violence, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Murder, Suicidal Thoughts, Vigilantism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-10
Updated: 2015-09-10
Packaged: 2018-04-20 03:00:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,161
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4770956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pendules/pseuds/pendules
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Their first rule is that they don't kill anyone. Not unless they can't help it. Not unless they need to. Not unless they can't justify leaving them alive.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>Some people are too dangerous to be allowed to keep existing.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>Adam starts wondering, after a while, if they're not on that list themselves.</i>
</p><p>In which Adam and Ronan accidentally become vigilante hackers/revolutionaries/possibly terrorists.</p>
            </blockquote>





	part of the machine

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by _Mr. Robot_ amongst a bunch of other things. (Plus just: Chapter 44 of BLLB.)
> 
> Halsey's [_Control_](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=so8V5dAli-Q) and [_Gasoline_](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRHNi3QfFlE) are the theme songs of this fic (Adam's and Ronan's, respectively).

Their first rule is that they don't kill anyone. Not unless they can't help it. Not unless they need to. Not unless they can't justify leaving them alive.

Some people are too dangerous to be allowed to keep existing.

Adam starts wondering, after a while, if they're not on that list themselves.

*

Adam's therapist tells him he has a fear of intimacy. No shit. What is he paying her for, anyway? He knows all about it, knows the cause of it, and no, he doesn't want to talk about his parents, even though that's basically the whole reason why he's here.

He's been seeing her every week since he had a major dissociative episode a couple months ago. He forgets to take his meds. He forgets a lot of things. Forgets to sleep, eat, go to class. Sometimes, he has good weeks where he actually _talks_ to people: his roommates, clients (as he calls the morons who pay him lots of money to hack their idiot friends), professors who say things like "You have a lot of potential, Adam" and "If you only _apply_ yourself." He likes talking about those. See? He's _totally fine_. She's not buying it, though.

He's annoyed enough to hack her for telling him things he already knows.

She has lots of pictures of her dog and not much else on her social media. Talk about fear of intimacy.

*

Ronan Lynch makes a living forging doctor's notes for Harvard students to get out of exams they haven't studied for because they spent the weekend passed out on the bathroom floor. Well, that's _one_ of the services he provides. Amongst God knows what else. Fake IDs, fake passports, fake prescriptions are just the tip of the iceberg. They're all impeccable. Even Adam can't find any flaws in his work (and trust him, he's tried), which is saying something. But he doesn't drink, he has no desire or need to abscond at this particular point in time, and he prefers his own special kind of high, so he has no reason to make his acquaintance. At least not until he walks into Adam's suite one afternoon in October of his sophomore year. Noah probably left the door unlocked again.

Adam's bedroom door is wide open because no one else is around and he walks right up to it like he's been invited.

"Gansey said you'd be here," he says, like this is a totally normal occurrence. 

Adam takes his headphones off and looks up from his computer. He's not in the middle of anything illegal (technically) at the moment, but he doesn't like being interrupted anyway.

"Can I — uh, help you?" Adam's carefully cultivated a reputation of being aloof and mildly unimpressed by everything and everyone he comes into contact with. He's definitely not feeling that way right now. But Ronan Lynch _is_ kind of intimidating. He has a sharp jaw and sharp eyebrows and a stare that seems like it could cut through glass. The tattooed hooks inching menacingly over his shoulders aren't even necessary. Everything about him screams _DANGER. RUN AWAY._ Also, his forgeries are _amazing_ and Adam might actually admit to being impressed by them. Under duress. 

"He said you could find people," Ronan says, like he hadn't even heard him, or he doesn't care. Maybe this is his version of asking nicely. He leans against the doorjamb, arms and ankles crossed. Like he's planning to stay there, looking effortlessly attractive and dangerous. At the same time. Adam wonders how that even works.

"You missing someone?" he says, trying to regain some composure. It's useless though; he's tripped and spilled his composure all over the room. Look, there's a spot of it on the wall too.

Ronan smiles, like a knife, looking serene and even more dangerous, impossibly. "Well, they're not missing yet."

*

Ronan's been tracking the man who killed his father for the last three years. The man who his dad owed a lot of money to, the man who sent some thugs to bash his head in with a tire iron. His dad was who he learnt it all from: forgery, credit card fraud, grifting, how to throw a punch. Niall Lynch sounds like a hell of a guy from five minutes of conversation. Adam's dad never taught him shit beyond all the reasons the world sucks.

"Greenmantle's a coward. He knows I'm coming for him." Ronan's sitting on the floor at the foot of his bed now, one long leg stretched out in front of him, a can of Bud Light snagged from the mini fridge in the communal area balanced on the knee of the other. (There's always beer in the fridge although none of them actually drink it. He thinks Gansey just figures it's a compulsory part of the College Experience.)

"Why would he be scared of _you_?" Adam asks, swivelling his chair towards him. Don't get him wrong, Ronan's plenty scary, but Greenmantle sounds like the untouchable type. The type people only whisper about, the type who people trade increasingly absurd rumours about but no one's actually seen, the type who could probably be a myth.

"Because I have nothing to lose," he says, simply.

"You've found him before?" Adam asks.

"A couple times. He was always gone right before I kicked the door in."

"But — But why doesn't he just have _you_ killed too?" It doesn't make any sense. Ronan may be a lot of things, but he's still just a _kid_ , all on his own, and Greenmantle's resources are probably near infinite.

"I think I have something he wants."

"And what's that?"

"I don't know." Ronan looks perturbed for the first time. Like he's been asking himself this same question for the last three years.

"So, leads? What about those guys that — uh, you know —" He gives him a significant look that he hopes conveys _Beat your dad to death. Messily._

"They're dead," Ronan says evenly.

"Did you —?" A tiny chill runs through him. Adam's never met an actual killer, but he's never found the idea of murder particularly objectionable either. As long as they deserve it. And these guys definitely did.

"No, I — I found them like that. _He_ did it. I don't think he wanted any loose ends."

Adam looks at him and he looks back and he knows they're both thinking the same thing: Ronan's also a loose end.

*

Eventually, Adam makes a connection. A bank account in the name of a Mr. Gray, who Ronan had identified as an employee of Greenmantle. It takes some time, tracing all the transfers through accounts all over the world under dozens of pseudonyms. But this is his favourite part: the unravelling, straightening out the spider's web until it all leads to one destination. That's the thing about hacking: try enough combinations and eventually, you get your answer, if there is one to be found. No ambiguity. One or zero.

"Greenmantle's personal account," he tells him, five days later. He had two exams to study for, okay, so it's not his best time. "I can go ahead and delete it all." It still gives him a tiny rush of power. One keystroke, nine figures down the drain. He doesn't usually go for the big gestures. Just a little off the top. From the biggest, richest douches he can find. Just enough so they don't notice. Just enough to maintain his habit.

But this is personal.

Ronan shakes his head. It's not about money.

"Credit card records," he says, quietly, eagerly.

Adam nods, pulls them up.

*

He's staying in the penthouse of a hotel in New York this weekend.

Ronan drops a wad of cash next to his keyboard. Actually says thank you.

He's already halfway out the suite door, when Adam pokes his head out his bedroom and says, "Are you going to kill him?"

"Haven't decided yet," he says, before closing the door behind him.

Adam believes him.

*

Adam goes to class, does his homework, remembers to eat on time, avoids Gansey's invitations to parties, hacks assholes who annoy him, thinks about Ronan and Greenmantle.

It's Thursday night (well, Friday morning, technically) and he's staring at the blinking cursor of the command prompt and it's like his world's been reduced to that. Just darkness and the cursor blinking behind his eyelids. He can't remember anything that happened in the last eight hours. Maybe he forgot to sleep again. Shit. Gansey usually checks on him around midnight. Adam doesn't think he ever came home. Noah's always so quiet, he's never sure if he's here or not. It's like living with the dead. Adam usually prefers that.

This time of night, the neon green numbers on his alarm clock glowing _3:14_ , this is where he lives. Code flowing through his head, fingers moving in a blur over keys, eyes alert and racing across the screen to keep up.

He's not inside his own body tonight, though. He's somewhere else.

He's thinking about Greenmantle, _all_ the Greenmantles, the men who think there are no consequences. God isn't going to strike them down, but maybe they need to be struck down by someone else.

He's never really thought about doing more before. Beyond getting paid pretty decently for finding out if some crew guy's girlfriend is cheating or spamming a professor's twitter feed with gay porn. Hacking's fun: messing with people, discovering secret desires, secret vices. Things to remember and smile about when you see them in lectures or in the dining hall. Like _I know. I know about the weird fetish and the online shopping addiction and the_ Toddlers  & Tiaras _binge-watching_. It's a way of knowing people without _knowing_ people.

This is _his_ vice.

He thinks about hacking Ronan, but he's almost completely offline. Figures. He can't exactly set up a Facebook page for his particular brand of skills.

He finds an article about his dad, though, and an obituary. It says his mom's still alive and he has two brothers. But he'd said, _Because I have nothing to lose_. It's going to nag at him, he knows.

Ronan's number's still on his phone though. He wonders if he works best at night too.

 _what are you planning?_ he sends without preamble.

The reply comes back in less than a minute: _something unpleasant_

_need help?_

Ronan honest to God sends him a smiley face. But even that looks dangerous.

*

"Hey," Gansey says at breakfast. "I forgot to ask, but did Ronan Lynch stop by? He said he had some computer problems."

Well, you could say that.

"Yeah, I fixed it for him a couple days ago. How do you know him anyway?"

"Our moms knew each other since they were kids."

"Really?" Gansey's mom is a Congresswoman; he can't imagine someone like Ronan being in any way associated with someone like her.

"Yeah, really."

"What the hell happened to him?" Adam asks casually. If the internet isn't going to provide answers, this is the next best thing.

"His dad lost a lot of money gambling. And then he got killed."

"They never found who did it?"

"I don't know if there ever was a proper investigation, really. You know, petty criminal, no one really cared enough to look into it."

"That's fucked-up," is all Adam can think to say.

"Yeah," Gansey agrees.

*

Gansey's too boring to hack. There are just loads of disgustingly cute conversations with his girlfriend from BU and endless research on Welsh mythology.

Noah's internet history is mostly cat videos and blogs about comic books and video games and punk bands.

Adam's internet history would probably guarantee a life sentence.

_how to knock someone unconscious_

_how to get rid of a body_

_how to remove blood stains_

*

Ronan has a folder that documents the most heinous of his fabricated crimes. All perfect forgeries. Death certificates, phone records, emails, paper trails, some pretty fucked-up photographs that Adam isn't even going to ask about. Add to that a hard drive full of twelve times more evidence than required to take him and his empire down for good. Some of it is even true. Maybe overkill, but better safe than sorry.

It's being uploaded as soon as he's dead. Or as soon as Ronan gets what he needs from him.

Ronan's pacing up and down the short width of his room while Adam just follows him with his eyes. 

"Have you ever —?" Adam asks.

He shakes his head.

He's been waiting for _this_.

Adam's maybe thought about it, once or twice, after midnight, shaking uncontrollably in his tiny bed in his trailer. He could've done it, probably, gotten to the gun first. Aimed, fired, before he even woke up. Not smart, but it would've felt good. Maybe that would've been enough. Better than an acceptance letter to Harvard and a scholarship and a future and money at his fingertips whenever he wanted it, enough to live and sustain his vice.

But maybe it would've all been a waste in the long run.

He and Ronan plan it down to the second. Every alternative mapped out and allowed for. No room for error. It's a masterpiece, better than any hack, better than any forgery.

*

It's too easy, almost.

Snagging the keycard from maintenance, triggering the distraction that sends one bodyguard down to the lobby, surprising the second with a blunt object to the back of the skull in just the right spot. Colin Greenmantle tied to a chair in front of two nineteen year old boys. Definitely not a myth.

"Ronan Lynch," he says, like he's welcoming him to a party. "It's been a while."

"It's over," Ronan tells him, face impassive.

"Who's your — Friend? Boyfriend?" He says it like he's actually interested.

Adam just tosses the folder onto the table with a gloved hand. It flips open to a particularly gory page.

"There's more where that came from."

"You got yourself a smart one, Lynch. Nice," he says, grinning.

Ronan drags another chair over and sits facing him now. "Time to have a serious chat."

"Aww, and we were all getting along so nicely."

"What do you want from me?" Ronan asks him.

" _You?_ " Greenmantle asks, incredulously.

"You kept me alive."

"It wasn't about _you_."

"My dad?"

"He knew things about me. From before. He couldn't live. But I promised him I wouldn't come near his family." He says it slowly, like he's talking to a five year old.

"You _promised_ him? Why the fuck should I believe that?"

"Because you're not a murderer, Ronan." He sounds almost apologetic.

"Don't fucking call me the name he gave me," Ronan spits out.

"What would he say?"

"He'd say to blow your head off."

"Ronan," Adam says, tense.

"What?" Ronan says, head jerking away from Greenmantle like he's been startled. Like he forgot he was there.

"We have to go. We have five minutes."

"Just — give me a moment."

Ronan stands up and starts pacing, the gun in his hand now. The safety's on. He presses the cool metal of it to his forehead for a second before he turns around and comes back to Adam.

"Ronan…"

"It's over in five minutes?" he asks, wild-eyed and frantic.

"Yes, it's — it's done, Ronan. Let's just —"

Ronan turns away from him so he can't see his face. Looking back at Greenmantle. He slowly walks towards him, one step at a time. Until he's standing right in front of him.

He brings the gun up to waist level.

"Ready?" he asks.

Greenmantle closes his eyes. There's something almost reverent about it.

It happens in slow-motion. 

Ronan brings the gun up to point it at the centre of his forehead. Adam starts to reach out but he's already too far away. It's already too late. His mouth opens but no sound comes out. Ronan's thumb taps the safety gently, a nervous tic. It's deafening.

Time resumes its normal speed.

He raises the gun above his head and then slams the butt into his temple. He head lolls to the side; he's out cold.

"Come on, let's go."

They lock the door behind them, return the keycard.

Except for the folder still lying on the table, it's like they were never there.

*

Adam can't imagine ever sleeping again.

They're sitting on the lumpy couch in Ronan's apartment, eating cereal and watching the shitstorm unfold on TV.

"We did that," he says, everything finally hitting him at once. The arrest, the atrocities plastered across the internet, the almost-murder.

Ronan just smiles at him. It's a different smile, one he's never seen before. It's not the smile of a hungry shark. It's the smile of a satiated one.

*

People talk about it for weeks. Gansey asks him if he's heard anything about who did it, through his hacker circles, and he just half-shrugs. 

Greenmantle's been linked to over fifty murders, to drugs and human trafficking and pretty much every unseemly thing they could add to the list. 

It kind of feels like this is what he was supposed to be doing all along.

*

Adam ditches class, doesn't do his homework, forgets to eat on time, avoids Gansey completely, doesn't pay any attention to the assholes who annoy him, thinks about Ronan, looks for new targets.

It's two weeks later when Ronan's standing in his room again. Greenmantle's in jail, most likely for life. Ronan was different for a while, happier. Now, he just looks lost, like he's trapped in a haze. Maybe it's the drugs. Or maybe he doesn't know what to do now.

"I know this was, like, _it_ for you," Adam tells him. "But I want to do it again." It's not about the rush, really; it's not about standing in a hotel penthouse with Ronan pressing the barrel of a .45 to a smarmy scumbag's head and being scared out of his fucking mind. It's about — control. Controlling how every piece moves. Controlling the execution. It's like a good hack. It's not just the results but the fact that _you_ made it happen, that they were utterly at your mercy. _Now they know how it feels._ Ruined lives. Ruined men. Justice raining down from the heavens. That sense of completeness, of rightness.

"Yeah?" Ronan says.

"Yes. But maybe we need some rules first."

*

Rule one: No murder unless absolutely necessary. Because clean-up will probably be a bitch and a half.

Rule two: No deviating from the Plan. The Plan is God.

Rule three: Leave no trace. No calling cards. No taking credit in any form or fashion. Just knowing is enough.

Rule four: They both have to agree to the target. If they don't agree, they don't do it.

Rule five: No innocent party gets hurt.

*

The last one is tricky because some of the people they're going after run conglomerates with thousands of employees. But sometimes, it's worth it; taking the bastards down is more important than lost income and hungry families in the long run. Weighing the risk is all he does these days. The risk of getting caught. The risk of getting assassinated. The risk of one of their jobs backfiring.

There's money in both their accounts, from Greenmantle, from the next two jobs. He's loath to spend it, though. Even on toilet paper and ramen. 

They start spreading the wealth around, to victims, to innocent former employees, to children without parents.

It's not just cold-blooded killers like Greenmantle. It's all the people who've taken what they wanted and taken advantage of the less privileged for far too long. 

*

Most of it's done through emails and secure phone lines, but sometimes, sometimes, they need to be there to _see_ it. The looks on their faces when they realise. All their worst fears coming to life as their kingdoms burn around them.

They travel under false names, all around the country on weekends. In and out without anyone knowing they ever left Boston. They're always back by Monday morning.

Gansey's suspicious, he knows, because of all the time he's spending with Ronan, because of when he disappears for a few days. But no one's ever going to imagine _this_. No one's ever going to think them capable of this.

That's kind of the beauty of it.

*

Ronan's lying on his bed in the dark as they go over the plan for the weekend.

"You think Greenmantle's going to give us up?" Adam asks. It's been on his mind lately. Wondering about new identities and fleeing the country. It'll be inconvenient; it'll be harder to do _this_. And this is all that matters now.

"I don't know. What does he have to gain by that?" It's not going to change his life sentence and Greenmantle only does things when there's something in it for him.

"Maybe he'd just enjoy fucking us over," Adam suggests.

"He has a wife," Ronan says, like he's considered it before. "He knows we can make her life even more of a living hell if we wanted to."

They both know that'll be breaking rule five. But they probably won't have a choice if it ever came to that. Adam hates the thought of that, of being backed into a corner, of losing the upper hand.

"He said he made your dad a promise." It's the first time they've talked about their little chat with Greenmantle since that night.

"He promised him he wasn't going to _kill_ me. Didn't say anything about selling me out to the authorities."

Adam bites the inside of his cheek, doesn't say, _Maybe we should have killed him. Would've been cleaner in the long run._

It wasn't his decision. It still makes him slightly uneasy, imagining Greenmantle in a cell somewhere knowing they're the ones who are doing all of this. 

Part of him is glad though. That someone else knows.

Sometimes, he wants to shout it to the world. Wants to say, _I did that_ , when it comes on the news. _I brought these assholes to their knees. He cried when we told him, you know? Not for his children, not for his employees. For his fucking power and money and greed. It felt so good seeing him dragged away. Knowing we did that._

*

Ronan passes out in his bed, and it's not a rare occurrence lately, but usually he's awake and gone before whatever ungodly hour Adam decides he's satisfied with his night's work and is ready to get his two-to-three hours.

Adam kicks his shin a couple times, only getting vague groans in reply, and then settles for shoving his semiconscious body to the other side of the bed before he gets in.

He can't remember the last time he shared a bed with someone. Ronan sleeps like the dead; it's kind of scary. It's like he's barely breathing. Probably a mixture of God knows how many different types of pills. 

Adam stares at him in the dim light. Thick, dark lashes. Bruises under his eyes, stark against the pale skin. Chapped, raw lips. He puts his palm just over his mouth to feel his breath. Then, he touches his cheek with the pad of his index finger, feather-light. His skin is unexpectedly soft.

He pulls away when he realises Ronan's waking up for real now.

"What time is it?" he asks, voice rough.

"Around four."

"I should go —"

"You don't have to." Adam likes having him here, even when he's too busy making incriminatory electronic connections to actually talk.

"Everything good?" he asks.

"Yeah, there's just a tricky security thing at his apartment building. But I'll figure it out."

"Still worried about Greenmantle?" Ronan says, misreading his pensive look.

"No. It's just — you never talk about your family."

"Neither do you," Ronan says placidly. Adam kind of expected anger over his prying. Or maybe completely closing himself off the way Adam does in therapy when his parents are mentioned.

 _My parents are dead_ , he kind of wants to say. But that feels wrong. Dead parents get let off the hook.

"My therapist says I have a 'fear of intimacy' because of them. That says enough, I think."

"I cut ties with my family when I started tracking Greenmantle. Too dangerous."

"You can see them now, though, now that he's rotting." Something like jealousy writhes in his gut. Maybe he'd assumed Ronan was just as alone as he was; maybe there was some comfort in that.

"I don't know how to go back to that, how to be that person," he says softly. 

"You don't have to be anything else," Adam tells him, like a benediction. Like forgiveness. It's taken long, way too long, to figure that out for himself. How to not apologise for your damage and your brain and your genes and things that aren't your fault. How to make the demons work for you.

*

"Do you believe in God?" It's midday and they're at Starbucks and Adam hasn't slept since before the job. Not since Ronan was in his bed.

"I used to. Maybe I still do." Ronan shrugs.

"Think he'd allow _this_ if he existed?" He's skimming all the articles about this Wall Street asshole's innumerable crimes that they'd exposed; he saves most of them to disk. It's the only trophy he keeps. All the raw evidence gets destroyed after a copy is uploaded for the authorities and the world to see. Physical copies incinerated, hard drives wiped clean. Like it never existed.

"What, a few rich assholes doing as they please and ruining the world? Or _us_?" Ronan asks, sounding distracted.

"Both, I guess."

"This isn't about justice, " Ronan says, and he's right, Adam's always known that. "But God's vengeful too, you know."

*

The first calling card they leave just says: _The Wrath is upon you_. It's not technically taking credit, as per rule three, but it puts a name to the operation. It feels like he can't go anywhere without hearing it after that. It's the only thing people are talking about on the internet. There are t-shirts and bumper stickers and blogs devoted to them.

It's terrifying. It's thrilling. It's everything he wanted, but somehow, it also feels like the beginning of the end.

*

Gansey drags them to some party at BU before Christmas break that turns out to basically be a rave. Totally not his style, but he spends the whole night attached to his girlfriend's mouth so it doesn't matter anyway. Ronan, best friend to all Boston college students, is continuously plied with booze and pills and joints. Adam's less interested in getting wrecked and more interested in what people are saying about them. _Terrorists_ , some asshole in a snapback says. _Revolutionaries_ , some pretentious hipster rebuffs. He'll take it. It all depends on where you're standing, he guesses.

Ronan drags him away from the debate and into someone's disaster of a dorm room.

"We came to have _fun_ ," he says, shoving a plastic cup containing a dubious liquid into his hand.

" _You_ did, maybe."

"Come _on_ , Parrish. Fun is good. Fun is _fun_. We deserve it." Ronan's pupils are fucking enormous. His grin is kind of psychotic. Adam can practically taste all the chemicals coming out of his pores.

Adam likes his drugs in carefully calculated doses.

Ronan pushing him back against the wall and sliding his tongue into his mouth is definitely neither careful nor calculated.

But shit, he tastes good. He tastes like _Ronan_.

Sweet and sticky and smokey and — there's something metallic and lingering under all of it. Kissing Ronan Lynch is exactly what he thought kissing Ronan Lynch would be like. Sharp and heady and contradictory.

When he finally pulls away, he laughs breathily and presses a wet kiss to his cheek instead.

"I wish it could be like this forever," he says, voice low and darkly alluring.

It's fragile, this moment suspended between them, this feeling of being ubiquitous and essential; he thinks it could fall and shatter into pieces with just the slightest wrong move.

*

Their tenth target is some mobster who owns a bunch of casinos in Atlantic City. It's a tough one; they'd spent two whole weeks making sure the plan was perfect while everyone else in the dorm was back home with their families.

He's kneeling on the plush carpet of the executive suite, his hands tied behind his back, and then he's _laughing_. Actually laughing.

"Greenmantle told me who you are," he says, the smug fuck. "Upload and everyone finds out."

Ronan shoves the gun under his chin and his hand's shaking slightly like it never does. There's naked panic in his eyes.

"You're not going to kill me. You're not killers. You're just dumb fucking kids." He sounds absolutely certain of that. Greenmantle had said the same thing to Ronan. Maybe it was true back then, but things have changed. The stakes are higher now.

Ronan looks at him and Adam looks back and they both know that he needs to die.

When Ronan pulls the trigger, Adam remembers his daughter's school photograph, her dark curls and pink cheeks, and God, maybe they've broken every single rule now.

There's blood soaking into the expensive carpet inches away from his feet and he knows that's going to be impossible to get out. There'll always be a huge stain right there in the open for everyone to see.

*

Clean-up is a huge bitch. Shooting someone in the head is very effective, but also very messy.

He thinks there's blood in his hair. He can taste it in the back of his throat. Maybe they're breathing in bits of blood and brain matter, absorbing the evidence.

They toss the gun into the river on the ride back to Boston.

Adam starts freaking out as soon as they're inside Ronan's apartment. It's like before all of this started when he could only see that blinking cursor in a sea of black. Like he's not in his body. Like he's hurtling through space. Like he can't focus and the room's spinning and Ronan's saying, _Hey, hey, I'm here, you're okay._

He gets him in the shower and takes his clothes off and the pound of the scalding water wakes him up like a shock to the heart.

Adam falls to his knees and the tile's cold and hard under his palms. He's shaking under the hot spray. He lets it wash away all the blood and fear and memories.

He sits on Ronan's bed after and waits for him to come out of the bathroom. His bones feel as cold as ice.

Ronan sits next to him wearing only sweatpants. Their shoulders touch and his skin's still warm from the shower.

He takes Adam's hand. His leather bracelets are gone — they're probably going to get incinerated like everything else — and he can see the constant scars for the first time. They just stay there, trying to breathe normally again.

Adam falls asleep curled into him, head tucked under his chin. The nightmares don't come. There's nothing but black, black nothingness.

*

They don't talk about it. Classes resume and Adam actually goes to his. Sometimes his vision blurs staring at a whiteboard of equations. Sometimes his hands shake so much on his keyboard that he can only type gibberish until he shoves it away in frustration. He starts knocking himself out with sleeping pills he got from Ronan. They don't talk about another target. They don't talk about the botched job. Adam burns the physical evidence, microwaves the hard drive, but there are no trophies to keep this time. That asshole may be dead but his operation lives on. They couldn't risk it.

Ronan meets him on the steps of the library after midnight. It's freezing. His teeth are chattering.

Ronan looks terrible, like he's been drinking all day, maybe all week, without stopping.

"I see my dad sometimes," he says.

"What?"

"Yeah, when it gets bad. Like, sometimes I see him dead. Like a nightmare. But other times, it's like — like he's _here_ , you know. I talk to him sometimes."

"Does it feel real?"

"Yeah, yeah, but it feels like he's a part of me."

"Maybe you should talk to someone," Adam suggests.

"What, like a shrink?" Ronan says, and laughs under his breath.

"Could help."

"Does it help _you_?" 

Adam shakes his head.

Ronan takes a bunch of different drugs. Prescribes them for himself. Adam wonders if they're to stop seeing things that aren't there or to keep seeing them.

Adam wonders if a part of him still wants to die. If without Greenmantle, without this, maybe there's no purpose anymore.

Adam finds another target. This is another kind of therapy.

*

No one suspects The Wrath had anything to do with the murder. They don't kill people. Everyone knows that.

It's just a setback. Minor. They'll get over it.

The next job goes entirely as planned. It's all there the next day: the praise and the validation and the assurance that the world _needs_ them to keep doing this. The world is better than it was before. Because of them.

It's almost easy to forget that it ever happened.

*

Ronan's been almost obsessively making lists of potential targets. At the rate they're going, they probably won't be able to get through all of them in less than a year. Adam's never thought so far ahead before; he's just been working job-by-job as they come up with them. And every job's different. Some require more time, more strategy, than others.

"We have to be careful about this," Adam tells him. The risk goes up with every new mark; a thousand new variables need to be catered for. Plus, they're so high-profile now that every rich asshole with something to lose is on red alert.

"Is it so fucking hard for you to give up control?" Ronan snaps at him.

Adam takes a deep breath; he's not in the mood for this right now.

"This is too important to risk fucking it up." Ronan's just looking for an outlet for his own guilt and self-loathing. He knows that. But no amount of take-downs is going to be enough to absolve him.

"Or are you just scared?" Ronan accuses.

"I'm not scared." It's a lie and they both know it. Adam's been scared all his life. Sometimes, fear is a powerful weapon though. It can be honed, made into something deadly and effective. Being afraid means you know what other people are afraid of too: Being helpless. Losing all control. Turning your fear into someone else's is exhilarating. 

And fuck, the world _should_ be afraid of him.

Adam's kissing him now, with the kind of purpose he's never touched anyone with before, shoving him back onto the bed, pinning his wrists down as he climbs on top of him.

Ronan's body is trembling under him. Adam kisses him softly, tells him, _Hey, you're okay_ , like Ronan did for him that night.

Ronan just arches up into his kiss like he's desperate for it. Like his touch is the absolution he's been craving.

*

There's a Congressman and they both know he needs to go. He has too much influence; he's dangerous. He needs to be stopped before it's too late.

But Adam insists they're not political. And this could turn out to be tricky for them.

"He's a friend of Gansey's parents. If we take him down, the consequences are unpredictable." Adam hates unpredictable. Hates it with every fibre of his being.

"It doesn't matter," Ronan says, sharply.

"It — it feels too _close_ , Ronan."

"Greenmantle killed my father. _That_ was personal. This is just some fucker who needs to get what's coming to him."

"Ronan — We said — We said we wouldn't do anything we didn't both agree on."

"Those rules are bullshit and you know it. There are no fucking rules. This is anarchy and that's what you _wanted_. You know I'm right." His eyes are fierce and challenging and Adam's afraid of what he's capable of for the first time since he walked into his dorm like he owned the place. Ronan's every unpredictable thing that Adam hates.

Adam sighs. They both know he's right. It's never been in his control. It's all been sheer dumb luck, that no one's found them out yet, that everything's gone according to plan (for the most part). That was the whole point of this. To let the world know that no one's _ever_ actually in control.

*

He resigns from office, reputation in tatters. Bribes, blackmail, threats — he wasn't going to stop, not until he'd amassed as much power as he could, power he couldn't be allowed to have. He knows Gansey's mom and his family name are going to be dragged through the mud; these assholes usually try to spread the guilt around as much as possible. 

Gansey's back in D.C. for spring break and he calls Adam and has an anxiety attack.

" _I know_ ," he says, after Adam's calmed him down and his heart's beating at a normal pace again.

"What?"

"You and Ronan — you've been up to something. Something I assume that's not exactly legal."

"Gansey…"

"I don't care what you've been doing," he cuts in. "I just — I think you could help me. _Please_."

*

"You can't do this," Ronan tells him.

"It's Gansey's mom. She's innocent. And you've known her since you were a kid."

"I know. But this risks exposure. Don't you think people will wonder how she got out of this scott-free?"

"You're sounding like _me_ now."

"Adam —"

"This is what we're supposed to be doing, right? Helping innocent people?" At least that's what he let himself believe. That this wasn't ever just about his own power trip.

"Is _anyone_ ever really innocent, though?"

Adam will think about that for a long time. Probably for the rest of his life.

*

Adam sends Gansey a text two days later: _your mom's in the clear_

_Thank you, Adam._

*

"So, Gansey knows," Ronan says the day before classes resume. They're sitting across from each other in the practically deserted dining hall.

"He can't prove anything. And he's complicit now."

"We can't tell him — not about —" Ronan looks like he's actually nervous now. It's strange, given how reckless he was acting just a couple weeks ago. Almost like he didn't care if they got caught or who got hurt in the process. But he's not worried about being exposed to the world, Adam realises — he just doesn't want the people he cares about to see those secret, shameful parts of him. He has something Adam doesn't. Something real to lose. 

All Adam has is _this_. Is _him_.

"No one knows that was us." It was a total mess, he'll admit that, but it's already done. There's no going back. And the asshole deserved it. Good fucking riddance if you ask him.

Ronan swallows hard before he says, "Maybe we should stop."

"What?"

"For a while. Let things cool down. There's too much attention —"

It's gotten too big. It's gotten bigger than they ever dreamed it would be. There's too much attention and with that attention comes unpredictability. The Wrath is on everyone's lips. There are probably teams of government agents working 24/7 to track them down. There's probably some hacker genius living in his parents' basement who's going to figure them out sooner or later. They have hardcore fans who reverse-engineer every single job they pull off. There are people who've lost everything because of them. People who want revenge for _their_ acts of revenge. It's only a matter of time before they both end up with a bullet in the head apiece. Adam leaves nothing to chance, no room for error. But nothing is ever completely foolproof.

Adam hates the unpredictable more than anything.

"Maybe you're right."

*

Gansey comes back and doesn't say anything about it and doesn't ask where Ronan is. Adam goes back to digging up dirt and doing petty hacks for cash he doesn't need. Ronan goes back to dealing drugs and fake IDs to trust-fund assholes.

Adam runs into him at a bar about a month later.

"Hey, do I know you?" Ronan teases.

Part of him is wondering what would have happened if they'd met like this the first time. Started from the outside and maybe worked their way in to the dark secret lives they live. But maybe this never would've worked if they didn't see each other clearly from the beginning. Neither of them are very good at trusting without insurance.

"How are you doing?" Adam asks. Ronan looks better anyway. He's clean-shaven and his clothes don't smell like smoke and stale beer. He's still winter-pale but his eyes are brighter. He looks good.

"I stopped seeing him." Adam doesn't know who he means: his dad, Greenmantle, the guy he killed. "And I've been clean. Mostly."

"That's — that's good. I'm glad you're okay."

"I — uh, I went back home for a while, after we —" He's staring down at the bottle in his hand, like it's hard for him to talk about it.

"I'm glad," Adam says, and he means it. It was too easy to lose sight of the people who they were actually doing this for before.

"What about you? Going fucking crazy from the monotony yet?" Ronan says, managing a sarcastic smile now.

Maybe he should be, but his therapist keeps telling him there's something lighter and more present about him these days. Like he's not constantly being pulled back down to the darkest depths of his mind. Like he can breathe again. 

"No — I mean, I miss it. But it wasn't about that. We changed the world. Maybe it started as revenge, but we — We _did_ that."

Ronan glances around the bar, like he's taking that in, like it's only now hit him; the world is a better place because of them. For everyone. Adam's eyes follow his to a girl in a 'The Wrath is upon you' t-shirt near the door, laughing with her friends.

"Gansey called me a couple days ago," Ronan says, looking back at him.

"He has contacts," Adam says, smiling. "He could be useful."

"Are you ready to give up control?" Ronan asks.

"I don't know," Adam says quietly. "But this isn't about _us_ anymore."

*

Four months later and it isn't just them. It's Gansey and his girlfriend, Blue, and Noah and a team of over one hundred people all over the world. And it's not just the mobsters and the evil corporations and the corrupt politicians; it's righting everyday injustices done to the people who can't fight back for themselves. The ones who supposedly don't matter.

Ronan was right. They're not innocent. None of them. Everyone is complicit, everyone who looks the other way or thinks it's not their problem. Everyone who enjoys their privilege without thinking about the cost of it.

This is just a reminder. Nothing stays hidden forever. There are always consequences.

They don't call themselves The Wrath anymore. It's not about them anymore. Not their vengeance, or God's. It's about the truth and The Truth belongs to everyone.


End file.
